Observation: Thoughts On The Need For Bigger And Bigger Houses
You have probably surmised by now that I’m a proponent of large houses. Houses big enough to provide sufficient space for all of life’s basic living essentials – you know enough main rooms to sleep, eat and entertain, a few random rooms for collections and storage (library, pantry, linen, hobbies), food prep (kitchens, BBQ areas), entertainment (TV rooms, space for puzzles, pool tables, etc.) and sufficient outdoor space for, well, “outdoor” needs and hobbies: pools, gardens, koi ponds (yes, this has become a recent need of mine) but come on, even I admit there’s a limit. When your need for housing square footage surpasses that of a neighborhood shopping mall (average sq. ft. of a typical neighbourhood mall ranges from 30,000 Sq. Ft to 125,000 Sq. Ft, and yes, I Googled it (https://www.matthews.com/retail-center-review/), even I start to do eye rolls and make negative assumptions inversely related to penis size.
Yes, in the turn of the century, people of wealth often did build extremely excessive dwellings (usually more than one) out of necessity. Dwellings then not only fulfilled the need to proclaim and retain social status within an increasingly hostile hierarchical environment, but also needed to perform the functions of a grand hotel. You have to remember that during the late 1800s when many grand estates were being constructed and operated, luxury hotels were only just beginning to appear in large cities. For the first time, hotels were being built to not only support overnight guests, but to also provide necessary ballroom and restaurant facilities to support social charities, balls, weddings and those all-important children’s “coming out parties”. Prior to the establishment and acceptance of these facilities, these large functions needed to be housed within one’s own homes, thus, it was essential they be designed and constructed on a scale which could accommodate these activities. Further to that, many country estates were located in more remote areas, thus needing to house, feed and entertain guests who would arrive by the trainload with their supporting luggage, staff and appetites. It was commonplace at the time for these house guests to stay for months at a time. And, due to the remote locations of many of these homes, there were often no sufficient local hotel facilities available.
But today, every local offramp motel throughout the nation sports dozens of rooms, restaurants and banquet facilities, eliminating any rational/ need to duplicate these facilities today within one’s own dwelling. One would think …
So, what does anyone today need with a dwelling which reportedly houses 29 bedrooms (personally, I don’t know 29 people, (58 if they each bring a date), and the number of my friends I do have is reduced further when I factor in which ones I am interested in inviting for a sleep over), 39 bathrooms, a power plant, three swimming pools (I guess in case 2 are broken), a Synagogue, multiple courtyards, a 164-seat home theater (so the 29 guests and their dates can bring a couple of ‘plus ones’ to watch televised Oscars ceremonies and Mary Tyler Moore reruns), a basketball court, golf simulator and a 2-lane bowling alley.
Well, apparently billionaire Junk Bond Financier, Ira Rennert does. For his personal use, he constructed this 110,000 square foot, multi structured, limestone, behemoth, he and wife, former airline ticket agent, Ingeborg Hanna Rennert, cutely named “Fair Field”, on 60 acres of prime Southampton oceanfront dirt. Aside from the aforementioned attributes, the property includes a 91 foot long formal dining room, game room, 10,000 square foot private museum to house Mr. Rennert’s personal art collection, a two-story, 7,400 square foot “playhouse”, entrance gatehouses (to keep door to door salesmen, Mormons and other assorted Hampton’s riff raff out), staff quarters, (no Molly Maid for Mr. Rennert!), a greenhouse, two pool houses, garage space for over 100 cars and various assorted mechanical and maintenance buildings.
When the home was originally developed, the estate conformed to Southampton Town building restrictions, restricting the size of a house to a percentage of the total area of the lot; even with a footprint of more than 100,000 square feet, the home feel well within the allowable percentage of the 63-acre property at the time. Because of the ostentatious size of Mr. Rennert’s “dick extender”, the town implemented a new and restrictive bylaw which now limits the size of any house- (or dick extender) to the (still ridiculous) maximum of 15,000-square-feet, regardless of the size of the property.
As with many new homeowners, once you have moved in and gotten settled into your new digs, you often realize life would be just that much better if your dining room were a couple feet wider or if you should have included an additional bathroom over there. Well, I was pleasantly surprised that it isn’t just the meek who have these construction regrets and rethinks. In 2013, Mr. Rennert’s attorney, Gil Flanagan, applied to the Zoning Board of Appeals for an amendment to the Sagaponack village’s house size restrictions (yes, those same restrictions that were put in place because of the outlandish size of Rennert’s home) requesting permission to add two bathrooms, a sauna and a Pilates studio to one of his two pool houses.
In the application, Mr. Flanagan stated (and I quote): “Right now, all (the pool house) has is a vestibule and one bathroom, which is pretty minimal by any standard”. I personally could not agree more. A pool house which is smaller than the size of a standard 2 car garage can be very restricting – the neighbours must have outright laughed at him during that first neighbourhood pot luck pool party!
According to The JewAge Newsletter, aside from the Sagaponack house, Ira and Ingeborg own a duplex apartment on Manhattan’s Park Avenue, a home in Israel, and a Gulfstream V jet in addition to multiple properties they have “gifted” to their children.
The beauty of this is, so often these blatant displays of disposable income do arise the suspicions of local tax investigators, ethics bureau’s, competition bureaus and fraud investigations. It seems that even though Mr. Rennert claims to be worth an estimated $64 Billion US and could have paid for his monstrosity with pocket change, he instead chose to fund his vanity project by illegally siphoning money out of a (now defunct) mining company he used to own. In February 2018, Mr. Rennert was ordered to pay US$118 million in damages as a result of his creative financing techniques.
Ahhh, karma!
One side note. Mr. Rennert was born May 31, 1934, making him 70 years of age in 2003 when the house was completed. Thinking this through, what does a 70-year-old need with all this space, (let alone a basketball court)? What exactly is it that little Ira is compensating for?
